Category Archives: Junk Food

General Mills Fruity Yummy Mummy Cereal and Frute Brute Cereal

General Mills Fruity Yummy Mummy Cereal and Frute Brute Cereal BoxesHappy Halloween! I celebrated the holiday in 2010 with a bowl of Boo Berry cereal. Having had a taste of the General Mills breakfast monsters, I was thrilled to hear that this year, they’re bringing back two retirees: Fruity Yummy Mummy and Frute Brute!

According to Wikipedia, Yummy Mummy has been trapped in his sarcophagus for 20 years and Frute Brute has been in hibernation for 29 years.

In addition to this, they also brought back the retro box designs. Oh, those marketers. They know nostalgia brings in the money.

Fruity Yummy Mummy Cereal

General Mills Fruity Yummy Mummy Cereal Box

Gotta love the insanely clashing colors on this box. Of course, if you want to get kids to start screaming at their parents that they will die unless they get some Fruity Yummy Mummy cereal, that’s the way to go.

Yummy Mummy is super psyched about his cereal. He also appears to have been wrapped in purple, pink and yellow ribbon by someone on their first day of training at the gift-wrapping station at JCPenney’s.

I guess the full name of this cereal is General Mills Fruity Yummy Mummy Artificial Orange Cream Flavor Frosted Cereal with Spooky-Fun Marshmallows With…MONSTER MALLOWS.

That is a lot of words, some of them redundant. Of course, the MONSTER MALLOWS are the important part, here. MALLOWS shaped like MONSTERS! Sold and sold.

Like any good kids’ cereal, there’s a little trivia quiz on the side panel of the box, including such questions as, “Finish this monster catch phrase, ‘Fruity Yummy Mummy makes your tummy…”

The answer is, “Go yummy”.

Okay, that’s kind of weak.

I do like question #5 though: “Which of these mail-in premiums was not offered with monster cereals – glow candles, monster ink stampers or a monster mansion?”

The answer is “glow candles”, and now I want a time machine to go back and get some monster ink stampers and a monster mansion. Those sound fucking awesome.

General Mills Fruity Yummy Mummy Cereal

Although this cereal is “orange cream flavor”, and also “mummy”-themed, we seem to have orange AND red cereal pieces that look much more like ghosts than mummies.

And as for the pink, yellow, purple and orange mallows? I have no idea what they are. My first thought was Frankenstein’s Monster head, but I guess maybe they could be the mummies? Heck, why not.

General Mills Fruity Yummy Mummy Cereal Bowl

I’ve been carefully ignoring the flavor of Fruity Yummy Mummy Cereal because the idea of orange cream-flavored cereal scares me, and let’s face it – the packaging is awesome and the actual taste of the cereal is secondary. I could frame the unopened box, hang it on my wall, and be happy.

But I guess I’m supposed to talk about the food, so fine.

I found the flavor a little off-putting at first, but it quickly grew on me. Yummy Mummy really does taste like artificial frosted orange cream, instead of just artificial orange. This is Mr. Mummy’s saving grace. I’m pretty sure I would have hated it if it just tasted like orange Runts.

The MONSTER MALLOWS have that great instantly-dissolving sugar taste common in so many cereal mallows, but only when eaten dry. Once you add milk, their taste and texture disappears almost immediately. Luckily, the ghost…mummies hold a good crunch.

I also didn’t hate the leftover cereal milk – an important aspect of all cereals. I think the milk really helped to make the whole thing taste like a 50/50 bar, and nowhere was this more prominent than in the orange-tinged leftover milk.

I can’t honestly say that I’d like to eat Fruity Yummy Mummy Cereal every day – while it wasn’t the total disaster I thought it would be, there are a lot of other cereal flavors out there that I prefer over orange cream. But when you take in the whole package, I think most kids would enjoy a bowl of ghosts and mummy heads on a fine Halloween morning.

Frute Brute

General Mills Frute Brute Cereal Box

Frute Brute likes to keep it simple. He’s just an ordinary werewolf brute, happy to eat his frute cereal. To be more specific, his Artificial Cherry Flavor Frosted Cereal with Spooky-Fun Marshmallows.

Wait, why does Yummy Mummy get MONSTER MALLOWS and Frute Brute only gets the regularly-fonted Spooky-Fun Marshmallows? Frute Brute needs to stop eating cereal and start tearin’ up a certain gift-wrapped mummy using his sharp orange claws.

Nice overalls, Frute Brute. Those clashing stripes look like they belong on an old Geocities site, which truly is terrifying. Then again, he has been gone for 29 years. Wait until he hears what the Internet has done with cats!

Like Yummy Mummy, Frute Brute has a trivia quiz on his box. “What was Frute Brute’s original catch phrase?”

“The Howling Good Taste of Frute.” I enjoy both the pun and the commitment to using the non-word “frute”.

Brutsie’s #5 question is much like the Mumsters: “Which of these mail-in premiums was not offered with monster cereals – bubble bath, bike safety flag or laboratory kit?”

The answer is “laboratory kit”, which makes me sad, because that would have gone great with my monster mansion. However, it does delight me to the bottom of my black heart that, at some point in time, you could get General Mills Monster Cereal Bubble Bath. I am trying so hard right now to finish this review and not go trolling on eBay.

General Mills Frute Brute Cereal

Okay, there’s no real way I can find to connect Brute to his cereal shapes. He’s rocking both the Pac-Man ghost cereal shapes and the “is that a skull?”-shaped marshmallows that Yummy Mummy had. Even the colors are barely different. Throw me a fang-shaped marshmallow or something.

General Mills Frute Brute Cereal Bowl

I thought I would hate Yummy Mummy’s orange cream cereal, but once it actually turned out to be not repulsive, I was less nervous about Frute Brute. It turns out I was lulled into a false sense of security.

Okay, so it wasn’t that bad. The sadly-not-MONSTER MALLOWS had the same qualities as the Mummy’s mallows, in that they were great dry but disappeared when milk was applied.

The ghosties were crunchy, but the cherry flavor just didn’t work very well as a cereal. It didn’t have that cough medicine taste that can plague cherry candy, but it was just a little bit unsettling. I would have bet that I’d like cherry over orange, but this time, that was not the case.

Frute Brute seems to be pretty into it, though. Whatever makes him happy.

Oh, and on the back of both cereal boxes, there’s a whole cartoon story to entertain you while you eat!

General Mills Monster Cereal Box Back

Love love love it. Love the story, love the drawing, and most of all, love the Halloween puns. I love you, General Mills Monsters.

General Mills Fruity Yummy Mummy Cereal and Frute Brute Cereal

  • Score (Fruity Yummy Mummy): 3 out of 5 gift-wrapped mummies
  • Score (Frute Brute): 2 out of 5 overalls that would make Fruit Stripe gum proud
  • Price: $2.50 each
  • Size: 9.6 oz. box
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: Contains no actual dessicated corpse or werewolf hair

Starburst Fruit Flavored Candy Corn

Starburst Fruit Flavored Candy Corn BagThis website isn’t a Lisa Frank diary where I talk about my personal life and how Bobby put a worm in my hair at recess today, but I feel I owe my dear readers an explanation as to why JFB has been even more sparsely updated than usual, especially since it’s my favorite time of year, when I at least try to cram as much Halloween goodness as I can on here.

Thing is, I’ve had two brain surgeries over the span of two weeks this month. Don’t worry, I’m not dying, nor did they remove the part of my brain that thinks awful puns are funny – much to the regret of all of you, I’m sure.

But I couldn’t help the timing, and it kinda wiped me out, resulting in a mostly Halloween-free October. Trust me, nobody’s face is more 🙁 than mine about this. Then again, my surgeries went really well and I could not be more 🙂 about them. Emoticons!

Plus, half my head is shaved and I have some gnarly-ass stitches, so I’ve pretty much got a built-in Halloween costume. Suck it, Bride of Frankenstein!

With all that business out of the way, let’s get to some candy.

Starburst Fruit Flavored Candy Corn. Because, as you may have noticed, I just can’t get enough candy corn.

Super unimpressed with the packaging. There’s nothing Halloweeeny about it. Couldn’t throw a bat or a witch onto the purple background? Maybe turned the traditional Starburst font into dripping blood? If it weren’t for the fact that it’s candy corn, this could easily look like a year-round product.

Starburst Fruit Flavored Candy Corn

These corns are based on the original Starburst flavors: cherry, lemon, strawberry, and orange. I probably didn’t have to clarify that, but I figured I’d be thorough. Throwing a bone to my colorblind readers.

My feelings about the Starburst candy corns themselves were the exact opposite of what I felt about the packaging. Bless the dark magic in your heart, Starburst: you made a candy corn with the exact texture of candy corn, but zero candy corn flavor.

So what do these candy corns taste like, if not candy corn? Well, they tasted exactly like Starburst! It was like having a bag of Starburst candies that, instead of being chewy, were easily masticated and dissolved into a giant burst of sugary fruit candy.

Regular Starburst candies take a little time to get through due to their texture, but I found I could easily get into Halloween stomachache mode eating handfuls of these.

The easiest way to put it is that if you like Starburst, you’ll like Starburst Fruit Flavored Candy Corns. And I like Starburst.

I really can’t think of anything bad to say about these candy corns, but for the sake of playing devil’s advocate, I guess some people might bitch about the fact that they’re called candy corns but taste nothing like candy corns. Obviously, I see this as a plus. But if you’re some sort of candy corn-loving weirdo, well, spider crawl your way back to Brach’s.

Heck, maybe they’re onto something with the generic packaging after all. I could definitely eat these year-round. For the sake of my teeth and my stomach, I guess I’m glad these are a holiday treat.

Or I could go back and buy 12 more bags.

Starburst Fruit Flavored Candy Corn

  • Score: 4.5 out of 5 “you missed a perfect score on a technicality since haters gonna quibble that you ain’t really candy corns”
  • Price: $2.69
  • Size: 20 oz. bag
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: Candy corn: 0. Starburst: 100%!

Brach’s S’mores Candy Corn

Brach's S'mores Candy Corn BagFor reasons unbeknownst to me, new Halloween items started showing up unusually early this year. For example, The Impulsive Buy reviewed Brach’s S’mores Candy Corn back in August.

Now, don’t get me wrong, if there’s any holiday I like to stretch out, it’s Halloween. I’d rather see witches and ghouls in August than Santas and ornaments in October. Which, sadly, is a thing I do see.

Amazingly, this is my first Halloween review. Normally, I’d call this absolutely unacceptable, but I’ve been a little busy with personal life stuff. I guess the best way to kick things off is with candy corn, the most iconic of all Halloween treats.

Except for the fact that candy corn sucks, and this is S’mores-flavored candy corn.

If you’re going to buy a bag of candy corn, dare I say it’s probably going to be Brach’s. You’ve already established yourself as the go-to candy corn; there’s no need to branch out. Brach out? No.

But stop they have not, and so we have these. I guess it could have been worse; at least S’mores are a treat generally associated with the autumn season.

In case you had a sad childhood, let me quickly explain what S’mores are: fire-roasted or otherwise heated marshmallows and pieces of a chocolate candy bar sandwiched between two pieces of graham crackers. If you do it right, the marshmallow melts the chocolate, leaving you with a messy, delicious, sugar-filled treat.

As you can see, Brach’s went all-out with the packaging. A few autumn leaves and a picture of a S’mores sandwich. Boo. I say that both with Halloween sarcasm and as a reprimand to Brach’s for not trying harder.

Brach's S'mores Candy Corn
ooooOOOOoooo, spooky penta- yeah nevermind

Well, at least they tied the colors together as best they could – brown base for chocolate, white middle for marshmallow, and an orange tip which kinda-sorta represents the color of graham crackers.

Unfortunately, the brown coloring bleeds onto the white, resulting, oddly, in a pink hue. Perhaps that’s meant to represent the Pepto Bismol you’ll be drinking after eating too many actual S’mores.

So how does this candy corn stack up to tasting like an actual S’mores? (Is the singular of S’mores “S’more”? I don’t really care enough to look it up.)

The answer, both simply and accurately, is no. The base does taste like very artificial chocolate, but the similarities end there. The rest tastes like a candy corn. If I close my eyes and imagine real hard, I feel like I can taste a little graham cracker flavoring, but that might just be wishful thinking, like hoping to score that full-sized candy bar when you go out trick-or-treating.

What these candy corns really taste like are Indian Corn, which is found in Brach’s Autumn Mix.

It took me quite a while to even find a good example of these, because I have thought since I was a kid that these were called Witch’s Teeth. Google basically slapped me in the face and told me I was making up words. My childhood was a lie.

Mind-blowing revelations aside, Brach’s S’mores Candy Corn is basically Brach’s Indian Corn with the tip and middle colors reversed and a ghostly wisp of graham cracker flavor. Given, I think Tootsie Roll-ish candy corn is better than regular candy corn, but it’s not exactly a tremendous upgrade, and the fact of the matter is that they still taste very little like S’mores.

I guess I’ll give points to Brach’s for trying to put a new spin on an old classic, but now I’m taking away those points for basically re-branding their already-existing Indian Corn.

You know what, fuck you Internet, they’re Witch’s Teeth. I don’t care what you say.

Brach’s S’mores Candy Corn

  • Score: 1.5 out of 5 – you guessed it – Witch’s Teeth
  • Price: $2.69
  • Size: 19 oz bag
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: Contains no corn.

T.G.I. Friday’s Dill Pickle Chips with a Zesty Horseradish Sauce

T.G.I. Friday's Dill Pickle Chips with a Zesty Horseradish Sauce BoxIt’s so easy to hate T.G.I. Friday’s. It’s a big chain restaurant that caters to both families and people who don’t know how to drink properly, the latter category of which I belonged to in my early twenties.

Sure, I have fond memories of my friends and I hitting Friday’s after work, ordering brightly-colored drinks with names like Pink Punk Cosmo or Patrón Cosmo ‘Rita Shaker. These days, if anything on your drink menu uses the term “’Rita’”, I’m probably out. In those days, I still drank Boone’s Farm. So that should tell you something.

I’d like to say I shouldn’t pass judgment, but I do anyways. These days, I can’t think of Friday’s without thinking of Office Space and Jennifer Aniston’s Flair.

The thought of dining at a TGI Friday’s (they can’t seem to decide whether or not they want the periods in their TGI acronym or not) fills me with a revulsion that can only be called snobbery. Oh, sure, I’ll eat peanut butter with a spoon, standing in my kitchen with no pants on. But eat at a Friday’s? Please. I’d so rather give my money to one of the dozens of mom ‘n’ pop places around here that lack both air conditioning and a strong grasp of English.

That said, I’ve bought T.G.I. Friday’s frozen foods on a number of occasions. There have been a proliferation of chain restaurants with frozen food selections these days, from P.F. Chang’s to Boston Market to Claim Jumper.

T.G.I. Friday’s takes up some serious shelf space, from appetizers to meals-in-a-bag to sliders and quesadillas. I am admittedly rather fond of their frozen Spinach, Cheese & Artichoke Dip. I feel less dirty buying their frozen products because I don’t have to look at anyone’s Flair while I heat it up in the microwave.

I have to say, I became a little resentful when I got home and read the preparation instructions for T.G.I. Friday’s Dill Pickle Chips with a Zesty Horseradish Sauce. There’s no microwave option – only conventional oven and deep fryers – but I’ve dealt with that before.

T.G.I. Friday's Dill Pickle Chips with a Zesty Horseradish Sauce Frozen

My real issue was that it only gave instructions for making the entire box (which is listed at 3 servings, or 22-24 pickles). It also said, and I quote, “discard unused portion of horseradish sauce”.

Basically, TGI Friday’s is telling you that you should not be eating these pickles alone. Honestly, you should never be eating at TGI Friday’s alone, because that’s just weird. But this is a freezer item. I feel like I should not have to eat 22-24 pickles all at once, and then just throw away the sauce. I call no fair.

Already annoyed that I had to make the whole box at once, I was ready to resent the 12-minute bake time at 450, mostly because I had to flip 22 pickles at the halfway mark. The instructions for the horseradish sauce were to thaw it in hot water for 6-8 minutes.

T.G.I. Friday's Dill Pickle Chips with a Zesty Horseradish Sauce

I didn’t expect such a short amount of time soaking to thaw it out, but it actually worked well, producing a sauce with the right viscosity and just warm enough to compliment the straight-from-the-oven pickles.

T.G.I. Friday's Dill Pickle Chips

The fried pickles themselves were well-battered and came out of the oven browned and impressively crunchy.

T.G.I. Friday's Dill Pickle Chips Inside

Far from bland, the coating had nice hints of garlic and onion, and complimented the briny tang of the juicy pickles, with neither overshadowing the other. Between the coating and the pickles, this was a seriously salty snack, of which I have no qualms.

T.G.I. Friday's Dill Pickle Chips with a Zesty Horseradish Sauce Horseradish Sauce

As I mentioned, the Zesty Horseradish Sauce thawed out nicely and had a good consistency to go with the crispy Dill Pickle Chips. TGI Friday’s was not fucking around with this sauce – the first pickle I dipped and ate, the horseradish cleared my sinuses with a quickness. I could even see little horseradish bits in the sauce.

I love horseradish, and this was serious horseradish. So much so that it overwhelmed the pickle chips entirely. I went back and forth between dipping and eating the chips straight, because I enjoyed both flavors, but couldn’t seem to get them to fit together. I was either crunching on some well-seasoned pickle chips, or wiping my runny nose from the potency of the sauce.

It took me some time to realize that maybe I should try dipping the Dill Pickle Chips into the Zesty Horseradish Sauce like a normal human being; and by that I mean, giving the chip a nice little dunk instead of scooping up sauce like the cup was going to run out of the room unless I showed it I was the boss.

After I tried this method, the flavors did get a little more balanced, but even then, the horseradish was really trying to steal the show.

In the end, I ate all 22 of T.G.I. Friday’s Dill Pickle Chips and did not have to suffer much anxiety throwing away the tiny amount of leftover Zesty Horseradish Sauce. 22 fried pickle chips is what I would call a somewhat hefty meal for myself, or a decent appetizer for two.

Having tasted the amount of horseradish in the Zesty Horseradish Sauce, I can now see why they’d tell you to discard the unused portion – I know from experience that horseradish will go bitter on you fast. But why not just have two, or even three separate packages, in that case?

I thoroughly enjoyed T.G.I. Friday’s Dill Pickle Chips with a Zesty Horseradish Sauce. (What’s with the “a”? It’s odd and clunky.) The pickle flavor was not lost and the coating was crispy and complimented the briny, juicy pickles. The horseradish sauce was authentic and sinus-clearing, which, beyond the fact that I was forced to eat the whole box at once, was my biggest complaint. I mean, I love horseradish, but at the level that Friday’s delivered it, I could definitely see it as not appealing to everyone.

But if you’re really going to be a pussy about it, just eat the chips and DISCARD the sauce, and you’ll still have a tasty treat. For a frozen appetizer, T.G.I. Friday’s Dill Pickle Chips with a Zesty Horseradish Sauce is truly solid, and I’ll be looking for it on shelves in the future. Even if it will only be for a party of one.

T.G.I. Friday’s Dill Pickle Chips with a Zesty Horseradish Sauce

  • Score: 4.5 out of 5 pieces of Flair
  • Price: $2.98
  • Size: 11 oz.
  • Purchased at: Walmart #3799
  • Nutritional Quirks: One box will provide you with an impressive 2,100 milligrams of sodium!

Ben & Jerry’s Cotton Candy Ice Cream

Ben & Jerry's Cotton Candy Ice Cream CartonCotton candy brings up mixed emotions for me. I realize that is probably the stupidest sounding sentence ever, but it’s true.

On the one hand, I think cotton candy is genius. Here’s a crazy paper cone with a bunch of what amounts to a spider web spun out of pure sugar on it!

On the other hand, spider webs are gross and sticky when they get on you, and so is cotton candy. One of my biggest pet peeves is having sticky hands.

Cotton candy is often associated with the fair. I hate the fair. Oh sure, it’s supposed to be fun, but to me, it’s just a giant mash of sweaty bodies, hay, and sad livestock. Fuck the fair.

I once volunteered at a booth at my local street fair, which is a different beast, in that it had no beasts. Or hay. I was in charge of making cotton candy cones, which was awesome for the first ten minutes, and then my arms started to hurt and the screaming children and people drunk on German beer made me remember why I don’t volunteer for things.

But on the third hand, I’m pretty fuckin’ good at spinning cotton candy, which is something I should really add to my résumé. Minus the “fuckin’” part. Because that would be unprofessional.

Check out that carton, though. B&J really knows how to make their flavors look fun. Their signature cow is holding some cotton candy, which is pretty amazing given that it’s a cow. Despite a lack of facial expression, she looks like she’s having a great time. Even though I hate the fair, I want to hang out with her. We could ride that Ferris wheel. Maybe I could win her a goldfish in a plastic bag. I’m not sure what she’d do with it, but I know she’d be delighted.

As if cotton candy wasn’t a fun enough flavor, Ben & Jerry upped the ante with candy sprinkles! Check that, it’s not just Cotton Candy Ice Cream with Candy Sprinkles, it’s Cotton Candy Ice Cream loaded with Candy Sprinkles!

Who doesn’t like candy sprinkles? They make pretty much everything better. Donuts. Cupcakes. I’m well into adulthood and I still have to resist buying Funfetti frosting, just because I remember those little multicolored chips being so awesome.

Tiny Tangent Time: I went to look up Funfetti frosting, and it was not what I remembered. The current incarnation of Pillsbury’s Funfetti frosting just has a container of sprinkles on top. The Funfetti I remember had little mini-chips of candy in it, yet I couldn’t find Funfetti like that anywhere on the Internet. Not even an old picture.

What I did find, however, were cans of Betty Crocker Rainbow Chip frosting, which just made me confused. The can was boring, and I distinctly remember the exciting look of Pillsbury’s Funfetti can as the can that contained the frosting I so loved.

I even went so far as to email my mom about this dilemma, since she was the one who made me oh-so-many graham cracker sandwiches containing what I thought was rainbow chip Funfetti frosting. Thank goodness my mom accepted my weirdness a long time ago; otherwise, an email with the subject line “Can You Help Me with Funfetti Frosting?” might raise some eyebrows.

I don’t know if it was a result of mutual hysteria, something my mother and I often share, but she completely agreed and was adamant that those little chips were Funfetti, and even agreed about the can design. But the Internet seems determined to prove us both wrong.

If you’ve managed to survive reading the last four paragraphs about frosting dilemmas, and can shed any light on this situation, please leave a comment! The Funfetti Question is now haunting me.

[Edit: If you read the comments section here, it seems like my mom and I are not alone in our memories. Credit my friend Andy for the link!]

Okay, seriously. Back to the ice cream.

Ben & Jerry's Cotton Candy Ice Cream

Soooo, I should have deduced this from the carton, but I was too enamored with the opposable-hooved cow and the idea of riding the Ferris wheel with her that I kind of ignored what the ice cream actually looks like.

The carton’s color scheme is pretty accurate, but seeing it in person, it’s a little off-putting. The cotton candy ice cream is, well, cream-colored, and the candy sprinkles are what I would describe as light magenta and pale indigo. I understand that they needed the ice cream to contrast with the sprinkles, but a blue or pink base for the ice cream itself would have been fun. I also would have liked the sprinkles to be brighter. Also, they weren’t exactly loaded in there, but they weren’t sparse, either.

For being little more than spun sugar, cotton candy does have a distinctive flavor, and Ben & Jerry’s brings it to life in ice cream form, which is not surprising. They almost always nail their flavor, for better or worse.

In this case, I’d say it’s both. Have you ever gotten a tummy ache from eating too much sweet stuff at the fair? If you’ve ever been to the fair as a kid, the answer is probably yes.

That’s what B&J’s Cotton Candy Ice Cream is like. The first couple of bites are like, yeah, this totally tastes like cotton candy! But as I continued to eat, it became, yeah, this is like, when I’m almost done with a cone of cotton candy and I can feel a ball of concentrated sugar in my stomach. They nailed the flavor, but they did it too well. It’s so rich I could never imagine having a whole bowl of the stuff. (Although really, who eats B&J’s out of a bowl, anyways?)

Ben & Jerry's Cotton Candy Ice Cream Sprinkles

But what about those loaded sprinkles? I’m sad to report that not only did they not add any extra flavor to the party, their texture was barely distinguishable from the ice cream itself. I would get a little hint of candy crunch on some bites, but for the most part it seems like they assimilated with the ice cream and lost all their crunchy powers, rendering them not much more than decorative dots.

So many things went right and wrong with Ben & Jerry’s Cotton Candy Ice Cream. They nailed the flavor, but it was too rich to really dig into. They had fun-colored sprinkles, but the base color was unappealing, and while the sprinkles looked like they should have crunched like Nerds, they just disappeared into the ice cream. The carton promised fun fair times with a cool cow, but instead I felt like sitting down on one of the dirty picnic benches and waiting for my stomach to recover.

I hate the fair.

Ben & Jerry’s Cotton Candy Ice Cream

  • Score: 2.5 out of 5 opposable-hooved cows
  • Price: $2.98
  • Size: 1 pint
  • Purchased at: Walmart #3799 (Walmart exclusive)
  • Nutritional Quirks: At 23 grams of sugar per 1/2 cup, it’s definitely living up to cotton candy sugar standards!

Limited Edition Watermelon Oreos

Limited Edition Watermelon Oreo PackageYou know that thing where your brain starts writing suicidal checks that your body knows it will never cash? That was me, walking to the grocery section of Target for the fourth time, thinking to myself, “If they don’t have Watermelon Oreos today, I’m going to kill myself.”

This obviously did not happen, since I am still here.

I kept being promised by red-shirted employees, who sounded like they actually knew what they were talking about, that the Oreos would be in stock the next day. On the first day, here’s how my morning started:

Me: “I have to go to Target today.”

Husband: “Uh, okay. Why?”

Me: “I have to get Watermelon Oreos.”

Husband [pause]: “I would have rather you told me you were going to go bang your secret boyfriend in the filthy Target public bathroom than tell me you’re going to spend actual money on Watermelon Oreos. That is disgusting.”

Unfortunately, there was neither gross secret-boyfriend banging nor Oreos on that day.

On the second try, I was so pissed off that I bought an iced coffee from the in-store Starbucks. I’m not sure who I thought I was committing revenge on, besides my wallet, but it made sense at the time.

On the third strike (after being told the second time that they’d definitely be there that weekend), I told Target it was lucky it was so close to my house because if my Regrets Per Mile were any higher, the building would be burning to the ground.

A smarter person would have learned after the first time to just call the store before going, but I kept being fed creamy broken promises sandwiched between two cookies of sheer hatred towards calling retail customer service.

As you can tell, I finally found success. Unfortunately, my secret boyfriend had the day off and the bathrooms were out of service. But I got what I really came for, which is a cookie meant to taste like a large summertime fruit.

The Internet Hype Machine is in full force on this one, for reasons I can’t quite understand. Oreos have already gone Birthday Cake, Candy Corn and Gingerbread. I guess once the machine gets rolling it’s hard to stop.

There’s also some talk about Limited Edition Watermelon Oreos being racist, which is pretty much the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Oh, okay, there’s a stereotype about black people liking watermelon. You know who else likes watermelon? Children. Adults. College kids who fill them with vodka.

I’d like to think Nabisco was aiming a little more innocently on this flavor; namely, “Watermelon is a classic summer flavor and it’s also a weird filling choice for Oreos. Let’s do this.”

Actually, the exact wording that I found is, “’We chose Watermelon because it is a fun, summer flavor that goes great with the Golden OREO cookie,” Oreo spokesperson Kimberly Fontes told TIME.

She left out the part about the hype, but I think it’s implied.

Internet blah blah-ing aside, let’s take a look for ourselves.

First off: packaging. I like that Oreo generally sticks to the formula of “blue packaging for chocolate Oreos, yellow packaging for Golden Oreos.” It makes it easy to identify what’s what on store shelves, especially since Oreo has come out with 700 different flavors/styles now.

The rest of the packaging is simple but effective: a giant slice of watermelon dominates, with a little untwisted Watermelon Oreo off to the side. It’s bright, it’s colorful, and it screams summertime.

Golden Oreos were the obvious choice for this flavor, because it’s basically a vanilla-ish sugar cookie, which fits a watermelon-flavored filling much better than chocolate would. Plus, it contributes to the overall color scheme.

As you can see, the creme is half-green, half-pink. Pretty much a no-brainer. My only lament, which I’m pretty sure other reviewers have already expressed, is the lack of tiny little black specks to represent watermelon seeds. C’mon, guys, those seeds are iconic. You could argue that these are seedless Watermelon Oreos, but if you did so, I would laugh in your face because we’re talking about a fucking cookie and you’re sperging out about semantics. Which would make me a hypocrite, because that’s exactly what I’m doing right now.

Furthermore, the watermelon slice on the package has seeds. Oreo, you know we’re going to be twisting off that top. Make the effort. Plus, some teensy crunchy candies would just add to the fun.

Then again, I may be putting the cart before the horse, here. You’re not really going to care about missing black specks if you’re busy vomiting into your kitchen sink because Limited Edition Watermelon Oreos are so disgusting.

Limited Edition Watermelon Oreo In Package

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I opened my package of Watermelon Oreos, but what I was least expecting is what I got – the sweet, bakery-like smell of Golden Oreos. Not a hint of watermelon in sight. Or sniff, rather.

The second thing I did, of course, was twist the top off, because that’s what you do with an Oreo. The inside looked pretty much like the package advertised – a swirly half-green, half-red creme, just like the color scheme of a real watermelon.

Limited Edition Watermelon Oreo Cookies

Well, not exactly. It’s more like mégot pastèque à l’aquarelle. In case you don’t speak French, that translates to “watermelon butt in watercolor”. At least, that’s what Google tells me; I don’t actually know French. I just wanted to sound fancy. With butt-shaped creme jokes.

I then licked the creme and was instantly hit with a familiar flavor – Watermelon Jolly Ranchers. It tasted obviously artificial and nothing like a real watermelon, but it was definitely distinct. It also wasn’t overly sweet, which I liked.

What I didn’t like was pretty fundamental – watermelon-flavored creme. I’m not adverse to artificial watermelon candy; I actually like Watermelon Jolly Ranchers and Watermelon Jelly Bellies.

When I ate the Watermelon Oreo as a whole cookie, an interesting phenomenon occurred. While the watermelon flavor was strong when tasting the creme straight, it became remarkably muted when paired with the Golden Oreo cookies. The cookies themselves have a quite sweet and vanilla flavor, and the watermelon took a back seat to this, for which I was thankful. It was odd that the creme had such a strong flavor on its own but diminished so easily when eaten with the cookies.

After eating four of the cookies, I was left with an uneasy feeling that was both inexplicable and familiar. I was suddenly reminded of Watermelon Jelly Belly Pudding Snacks. I don’t know what it is, but it seems like there’s a place for artificial watermelon flavor, and that place is neither cookie creme nor pudding.

Nabisco nailed that artificial watermelon flavor, so I have to give them points for that. But on the other hand, Watermelon Oreos are just…not necessary. I appreciate the summertime marketing ploy and weird-factor hype, but the actual taste of the creme just didn’t sit well with me. Paired with the cookies, the toned-down flavor got a little better, but overall, it was just too bizarre for my taste buds.

But hey, at least I didn’t barf.

Limited Edition Watermelon Oreo

  • Score: 2 out of 5 watercolor butts
  • Price: $2.99
  • Size: 15.25 oz. package
  • Purchased at: Target (exclusive)
  • Nutritional Quirks: It’s a fucking Watermelon Oreo. Need I say more?

Other reviewers who seemed to like these more than I did: The Impulsive Buy, Food Junk, Junk Food Guy, Brand Eating

News: Twinkies Make “The Sweetest Comeback in the History of Ever” on July 15!

Yes, you read correctly: Twinkies are coming back! And a handful of other Hostess treats, too.

You may be wondering how this happened, since Hostess filed for bankruptcy. If you’re like me, you had no doubt that Twinkies would be back – somebody was gonna buy Hostess and re-start production, right?

Well, that’s pretty much what happened, but it gets a little more complicated than that. WARNING: Business words and stuff ahead!

After reading about four different business articles and looking up some terminology, I now have an MBA and think I can break it down with at least some accuracy like this:

Hostess is now owned by the private equity firms Apollo Global Management and Metropoulos & Co. This allows Hostess to bring back Twinkies and other beloved sweets.

There’s a bunch of gobbledygook (technical term) that means that these firms own Hostess under what’s called a “stalking horse bid”, which Wikipedia defines as “an attempt by a debtor to test the market in advance of an auction. The intent is to maximize the value of its assets as part of (or before) a court auction in case of bankruptcy.”

So, if I’ve researched correctly, basically Hostess will make their Twinkies, you will buy them, and this will inflate the value of Hostess as a company. The equity firms can then “flip” Hostess for what would probably be a large profit, selling it off to another company.

C. Dean Metropoulos, who is, by the way, worth $1.2 billion, has done this before with companies like International Home Foods.

What does this mean for you, the consumer and presumed lover of Twinkies? On July 15, you will witness “the sweetest comeback in the history of ever.” (Hostess’s words, not mine.)

I could have just said that in the first place, but I thought I’d give you a little business lesson in the process. Just get yourself a Twinkie and enjoy it.

Doritos Locos Tacos Taco Bell Nacho Cheese Crunchy Taco and Cool Ranch Crunchy Taco Tortilla Chips

Doritos Locos Tacos Taco Bell Nacho Cheese Crunchy Taco and Cool Ranch Crunchy Taco Tortilla Chips BagsDoritos Locos Tacos Taco Bell Nacho Cheese Crunchy Taco and Cool Ranch Crunchy Taco Tortilla Chips are quite possibly the most meta snack to ever hit the chip shelves. They are Doritos, based on fast food tacos, which have the shell of a Dorito.

I think we can all see where this is going. Taco Bell Doritos Locos Taco Taco Bell Doritos Locos Taco… it will be the Möbius strip of food that will eventually take over Taco Bell’s entire menu and choke the chip aisle. It will be the undoing of humanity.

…Okay, maybe I’m getting a little carried away. But I think we can all agree that this is getting ridiculous.

Like the Taco Bell Doritos Locos Tacos, the Doritos Locos Tacos Taco Bell Tortilla Chips come in two flavors: Nacho Cheese Crunchy Taco and Cool Ranch Crunchy Taco. Doritos loves to do the “two flavors in one bag” thing, so this is right up their alley.

Doritos Locos Tacos Taco Bell Nacho Cheese Crunchy Taco Tortilla Chips

Doritos Locos Tacos Taco Bell Nacho Cheese Crunchy Taco Tortilla Chips

Upon opening the bag, my olfactory senses were overwhelmed with the smell of taco seasoning. Like opening a pack of McCormick’s seasoning you’d add to some ground beef for “Tuesday Taco Night” with some of those pre-made shells that have a flat bottom so they stand up on their own. Man, I wish I had invented those. Genius.

Doritos Locos Tacos Taco Bell Nacho Cheese Tortilla Chip

When I tasted the nacho cheese chips by themselves, it was instantly obvious that these are just regular Nacho Cheese Doritos, to the surprise of no one. They got a little bit of taco flavoring due to spooning with Crunchy Taco in the bag. Let’s face it; it’s like a forced cuddle party. There’s gonna be some contact.

Doritos Locos Tacos Taco Bell Nacho Cheese Crunchy Taco Tortilla Chip

The Crunchy Taco flavor was very powerful. My brain went flipping through its Rolodex (my brain is technologically behind the times) of Doritos flavors, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint the flavor powder. It definitely wasn’t Taco Flavor Doritos. It was just…straight-up taco seasoning. I can’t find another way to describe it.

When eaten together, as I’m assuming God, Doritos and Taco Bell intended, Crunchy Taco overwhelmed the taste of Nacho Cheese. I could, however, get some nacho aftertaste, which did compliment the taco flavor.

Did these chips mimic a Taco Bell Doritos Locos Nacho Cheese Taco? Not even close. But if you want to treat these like Doritos Collisions or the various other Doritos “two flavors in one bag”, they’re not too bad.

Doritos Locos Tacos Taco Bell Cool Ranch Crunchy Taco Tortilla Chips

Doritos Locos Tacos Taco Bell Cool Ranch Crunchy Taco Tortilla Chips

It’s difficult to say much more about these Cool Ranch Crunchy Taco Doritos that hasn’t already been said about the Nacho Cheese version. Again, that taco seasoning smell was very present.

Doritos Locos Tacos Taco Bell Cool Ranch Tortilla Chip

Also again, there was nothing new about the Cool Ranch Doritos. Like Nacho Cheese, rubbing up against Crunchy Taco resulted in some flavor transfer. I’m starting to wonder about these cuddle parties.

Doritos Locos Tacos Taco Bell Crunchy Taco Tortilla Chip (2)

I kept some of my observations about Crunchy Taco Doritos out of the Nacho Cheese portion of this post so that I could say something here besides using the word “again” 20 times in one review.

The fact of the matter is, Crunchy Taco Doritos had too much flavor dust.

Now, usually, I savor the joy of finding those few Doritos that somehow got hit with too much flavoring in their journey from tortilla chip to flavored tortilla chip. In the case of Crunchy Taco, however, it was like every chip had been blasted to hell with the stuff.

Unfortunately, this fact worked against Cool Ranch even more than Nacho Cheese. Eating the two chips together pretty much obliterated the Cool Ranch flavor.

Mark this day in Junk Food Betty history, because I’m about to say something that I may never say again: Crunchy Taco Doritos were actually too salty. I say this with gravitas, because I am a salt vampire, so for me to say something is too salty is borderline insanity.

In the end, both flavor combos suffered from the same fault: Crunchy Taco was too strong, snuffing out the flavors of Nacho Cheese and Cool Ranch. Furthermore, they tasted nothing like the tacos they were trying to emulate in a weird, meta way.

I actually liked the Crunchy Taco flavoring, despite it tasting nothing like a Taco Bell taco, but someone cranked the flavor knob up to 11, which resulted in too much salt and the obfuscation of the flavors it was supposed to compliment.

I usually find Doritos dual flavors uninspired but acceptable, but this was a strange case of flavor overload. I hope that my predictions of a Doritos Locos Tacos Taco Bell Möbius strip don’t come true, because that is a weird vortex that I don’t want to be a part of.

Doritos Locos Tacos Taco Bell Nacho Cheese Crunchy Taco and Cool Ranch Crunchy Taco Tortilla Chips

  • Score (Nacho Cheese Crunchy Taco): 3 out of 5 questionable cuddle parties
  • Score (Cool Ranch Crunchy Taco): 2 out of 5 salt vampires saying “Whoah, too much
  • Price: $1.49 each
  • Size: 3 3/8 oz. bags
  • Purchased at: 7-Eleven #21821
  • Nutritional Quirks: I have no evidence to support this, but I believe a fire hose was brought in to spray the Crunchy Taco Doritos. Now that’s quirky.

Australian Snaxplosion: Thins Light & Tangy and Chicken Thin & Crispy Potato Chips and Burger Rings

Australian Snaxplosion Thins Light & Tangy, Thins Chicken and Burger Rings Bags2A little while back, I got an email from a stranger living in Australia. She loves Skittles. She loves them so much, in fact, that she asked if I could ship her a bag of Darkside Skittles, since they didn’t have them where she lived.

She suggested we do a snack trade. Because I noted that she had her own food website, I immediately gave her my address, because you can obviously trust a complete stranger that you’ve emailed twice on the Internet, as long as they have a food blog.

I got into a lot of white, unmarked vans as a child. Obviously unrelated, but I felt I should mention it.

We made arrangements, and a surprisingly short time later, a totally awesome box full of Australian goodies arrived at my doorstep. So full, in fact, that there was no way I could fit them all into one review. Or two reviews. In fact, I may be reviewing them forever. Keeping this in mind, I won’t be using my usual review structure – I’ll just give a quick rating at the end of each item.

That said, enjoy part one of Australian Snaxplosion!

Thins Light & Tangy Thin & Crispy Potato Chips

Australian Snaxplosion Thins Light & Tangy Bag

Thins have a pretty much identical texture to Lay’s potato chips, which makes sense, since they were once owned by Pepsico, who bought them from Smith’s, but then sold them to…you know what, nevermind. Just know that the base chip is just like Lay’s.

I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from Thins Light & Tangy, since neither of these words are particularly descriptive. Lightly flavored? Light in calories? Tangy…how?

The back of the bag offered me no clues. There was no nutritional information box, nor was there an ingredients list. I found this intriguing, since I’m pretty sure it’s a law or something to list that stuff in the United States. “Or something” – that’s good research, right there. In fact, none of the three items being reviewed today had any information on the back. You roll the dice when you snack Australian.

If you can’t tell by the pictures, all three of these snacks came in surprisingly small bags. By small, I mean, one serving. An actual serving, not an American serving. Something you would eat during a work break. It’s like comparing a 12-ounce soda to a Big Gulp. I wonder, do they offer gallon-sized jugs of soda in Australian convenience markets? My hunch is no.

Australian Snaxplosion Thins Light & Tangy Chips

Anyways, Thins Light & Tangy had a nice vinegar bite with an equal amount of…tang. I could definitely identify some onion in there, but it wasn’t sour cream and onion-flavored…perhaps a bit of a ranch flavoring? I think ranch would count as tangy.

Australian Snaxplosion Thins Light & Tangy Chips Close-Up

I won’t lie, I did look up the ingredients, but only after I’d tasted the chip. Some of the ingredients are “Vegetable Powders (Onion, Tomato), Flavour (Natural), Flavour Enhancer (621) and Herbs & Spices”.

I couldn’t taste any tomato, but the rest seemed about on point. Of course, I have no idea what 621 Flavour Enhancer is, but hey.

In the end, I never did learn what was so light about Thins Light & Tangy Thin and Crispy Potato Chips. I did, however, enjoy the taste. They had a nice balance of vinegar, salt, and a present but not overwhelming ranch-like flavor. Nothing crazy or groundbreaking, but a fine snack, nonetheless.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 kudos for using the moniker “Light” for seemingly no reason at all

Thins Chicken Thin & Crispy Potato Chips

Australian Snaxplosion Thins Chicken Bag

Chicken-flavored potato chips may seem pretty out there if you’re American, but according to my brief Internet research, chicken seems to be a pretty common flavor for Australian snacks. In fact, I got another chicken-flavored snack in my box, Chicken Twisties, but they didn’t survive the International travel very well, and by that I mean, both ends of the bag blew out. Amazingly, this was the only casualty of the whole box, so I consider myself lucky.

Maybe chicken doesn’t seem so out there when you consider the crazy flavors we’ve seen over the years. Mountain Dew-flavored Doritos, anyone? Besides that, if I had to pick a meat to flavor chips, chicken seems the most innocuous.

Australian Snaxplosion Thins Chicken Chips

Thins Chicken chips look remarkably similar to Light & Tangy, but the tastes are worlds apart. They look and feel almost identical – again, think Lay’s with some green flecks on them – but Chicken lacks all the twang that excites taste buds. Is it possible for a food to taste…matte? If it is, that is how I would describe Thins Chicken.

While the unfortunately unseen Twisties Chicken tasted like chicken bullion, Thins Chicken didn’t taste like chicken at all. In fact, I’m not sure what they tasted like. They were very salty, and there was a little onion, but that was about it.

Actually, there was a strange aftertaste that I can only describe as “chewing on an old jar of chicken bullion cubes”. It was very odd and unpleasant.

I was steeling myself for chicken-flavored potato chips when I opened up my bag of Thins Chicken Thin & Crispy Potato Chips, but what I got was actually worse. Instead of chicken, I got a flavor that was both bland and unnatural. After enjoying Thins Light & Tangy, I was surprised at how badly Thins Chicken failed to live up to its name.

Rating: 2 out of 5 ways that Thins managed to make chicken-flavored chips taste worse than chicken-flavored chips

Burger Rings

Australian Snaxplosion Burger Rings Bag

As you may imagine, Out of the three offerings shown here, I was most intrigued by this product. Burger Rings! Again, these may sound odd to Americans, and the lack of imagery plus the promise of “big burger taste” on the front of the bag may conjure memories of things like Doritos Late Night All-Nighter Cheeseburger. I know it did for me, and that was not necessarily a good thing.

Burger Rings are apparently very popular in Australia, so I thought, how bad can they be?

Australian Snaxplosion Burger Rings

That’s usually an ominous question, but for once, I was pleased to discover that they were not bad at all. In fact, I enjoyed them quite a bit.

Upon first glance, Burger Rings look like smaller, redder versions of Funyuns. They say we eat with our eyes, and in this case, my eyeballs were pretty spot-on. The texture was indistinguishable to that of Funyuns – light and somewhat puffy, but with a satisfying crunch. I would call it a “soft crunch”, if such a thing exists.

The flavor of Burger Rings was distinctly that of cheese and tomato. Breathe a sigh of relief – unlike the abominations that have been created in the US, Burger Rings made no attempt to make their product taste like meat. “Big burger taste” is just big talk.

Unlike Funyuns, Burger Rings are the perfect size for popping into your mouth. I found that I’d blown through my appropriately snack-sized bag rather quickly. With a generic cheesy tomato flavor and a crunchy but non-gum-stabbing texture, they were easy and fun to eat.

While I would have preferred something else to go with the cheese – maybe onion, or, dare I say, garlic – I can see why so many Australians like this snack. I was glad that my Aussie snack trading partner had included two bags, because one was just not enough. I’d love to see Burger Rings sitting next to Funyuns on store shelves. It’s time someone gave them a run for their money in the ring-shaped crunchy snack department.

Rating: 4 out of 5 sighs of relief that Burger Rings taste nothing like actual burgers

That wraps up part one of our unknown number of Australian snack food reviews! I’ll be back later with more treats from the land down under. In the meantime, watch out for drop bears, folks.

M&Ms White Chocolate Carrot Cake

M&Ms White Chocolate Carrot Cake BagM&Ms seems to have a thing going with white chocolate holiday-themed flavors. First it was Candy Corn. Then Peppermint. And just in time for Easter, we now have Carrot Cake.

For being such a well-known and widely available candy, M&Ms did not make finding White Chocolate Carrot Cake easy. First off, it’s a Walmart exclusive. Not an uncommon phenomenon, but one I always find displeasing, because…Walmart.

Second, not only is it a Walmart exclusive, it’s only available at select Walmarts. I didn’t know this until some sort of snack sense told me I should try to look up available locations before I left my house. I’m glad I did, since Walmart has a whole website devoted to finding a select store that carries them.

My closest Walmart was not on this list, which is why I’m so glad I looked, because going to Walmart is one thing, but going to Walmart and not finding the one thing I’m looking for just makes me want to murder every person in the store. Lucky for me, the next closest Walmart actually did have them. This is a lot of effort for goddamn M&Ms.

I consider the effort worth it, however. Easter is a holiday made for candy, but most of that candy comes in the form of chocolate bunnies, and regular candies packaged in plastic Easter eggs or pastel packaging.

That said, I give M&Ms credit right off the bat for actually thinking up an Easter flavored candy. I mean, eggs already taste like eggs, the church kind of has a stranglehold on things that taste like Jesus, and I don’t think making something rabbit-flavored would go over very well. Biting the ears off a bunny that’s made of chocolate is satisfying; actually chomping on a bunny-tasting bunny-shaped candy would make me uncomfortable and probably not go over well with the kids.

Given all that, I think M&Ms coming up with carrot cake is brilliant. Will the execution compete with the concept? We shall see in a moment.

First, I have to bitch and moan some more. Surprise! This time, it’s about the packaging. For the most part, the bag is simple and effective – it’s carrot cake. Here’s a slice of carrot cake.

That’s all well and good, but I am so not a fan of anthropomorphic Green M&M. Red and Yellow are dumb, but whatever. When they introduced Green as the “sexy” M&M, however, I was yucked out. Maybe it’s because I’ve been on the Internet for too long, but I am not fond of sexualizing any inanimate object.

The whole Green M&M schtick is annoying, and that is showcased here, with “her” wearing bunny ears and posed like Leonardo DiCaprio is about to draw her portrait. Plus, she totally has bedroom eyes, which is a sentence I feel dirty just typing. Ugh, take it away, I don’t want to look at it anymore. I’d rather see Red dressed up as a Playboy bunny looking bored or pissed off.

M&Ms White Chocolate Carrot Cake

Okay, here we are, with the actual candies. They’re about the same diameter as regular M&Ms, but have a bit more girth. I like the color scheme – the orange is obviously the brightest, representing, duh, the carrot. The green is more of an Easter pastel, but you can’t have a carrot-themed…whatever without some green representing the carrot stem.

The off-white is an interesting choice, but one that I approve of. It’s unrelated to the vegetable, but pertinent to carrot cake itself – part of the deliciousness of carrot cake is the cream cheese icing, which is pretty close to the color of these M&Ms. It’s an attention to detail that I appreciate.

I have to say, I was prepared to be disappointed by M&Ms White Chocolate Carrot Cake. I felt the candy had lofty goals that it wouldn’t be able to reach. Upon opening the bag, however, I was met with a strong and very pleasant cinnamon-and-nutmeg odor along with sugary sweetness. It was surprisingly reminiscent of real carrot cake.

M&Ms White Chocolate Carrot Cake Inside

As it turned out, my olfactory sense did not betray me – these M&Ms are about as close to tasting like actual carrot cake as a candy can get. Again, you’ve got that great blend of cinnamon and nutmeg that is prominent but not overwhelming. The use of white chocolate was an excellent choice – it let the spice flavors shine, while adding just the right amount of sweetness and acting as a cream cheese substitute.

In fact, there might even be a little cream cheese flavor magic going on here – while it’s easy to identify the above spices, there seems to be a little extra something that pushes it beyond just spice territory into an actual, cohesive carrot cake candy. The ingredient list doesn’t offer me any help: it’s mostly white chocolate and the regular sugar and food coloring flavors, along with the always-mysterious “natural and artificial flavors”.

Like I said, I had serious doubts about M&Ms White Chocolate Carrot Cake being able to deliver on their promised flavor. I’m happy to say I was wrong. Those crazy candy wizards over at Mars pulled it off. I love carrot cake, and I found myself continuing to shovel these guys into my mouth until I had to force myself to stop before I made myself sugar sick.

If you don’t like carrot cake, you’re not going to like these M&Ms, but that’s just another point showing how well they showcased the flavors. I’m sorry I got around to this review so late, but hey – you can probably run out and get some right now, or wait until Monday, when they’ll probably already be on clearance.

My biggest beef, besides my hatred of Green M&M, is how Walmart is only selling them in select stores. That makes no sense to me and is really annoying. But if you like carrot cake and would like to try a unique Easter treat, use the locator tool I linked above to see if there’s a Walmart within 500 miles of you that has been mysteriously chosen to be one of the select stores that carry them. Happy Easter! Or “Hoppy Easter”, if you like old, tired puns!

M&Ms White Chocolate Carrot Cake

  • Score: 4.5 out of 5 kicks to Green M&M’s stupid bedroom face
  • Price: $2.88
  • Size:9.9 oz. bag
  • Purchased at: Walmart
  • Nutritional Quirks: Damn you, “natural and artificial flavors”! I want to know what you use to make magical carrot cake candy! (On second thought, maybe I don’t…)

The Impulsive Buy also reviewed these White Chocolate Carrot Cake M&Ms!